Ice Cream in a bag!

For our nutrition activity last month we did ice-cream in a bag.  This is a great activity for science and uses  some gross motor skills too.  Not to mention it is very inexpensive for those on a class budget :)

Here are all of our ingredients: Ice Cubes; Ice Cream Salt; 1 cup half and half; 2 TB sugar; 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Add everything but the salt into a ziplock bag.  

Then close it tightly and place it in another bag that is filled 1/4 way with ice cubes. Next sprinkle in the salt. 

I didn't get a picture of the kids shaking the bag but here is the finished product!

Updating My Teacher's Office!

I have a separate office attached to my classroom that I share with two assistants.  It is quite cramped and I wanted to make it more homey.  So I decided to personalize it a little bit.  I decorated a bulletin board with zebra duck tape and black office organizers with the tape too.  I think they turned out well!

Before

 After

I filled the board with past children's/parents cards and class photos.

This is right above my computer screen now :)

Then I duck taped all the container's edges with the zebra tape too. 

Next I want to order one of those Etsy teacher signs.  Then it will definitely be more homey :)

Classroom Management Problem Solved!

Problem: I was noticing that my students had a hard time understanding how many could be in a center at a time.  
Solution: So to help with this I came up with our "Monkey" system.   

Each center has monkeys that represent  the amount of children that can be at that particular center.

 There is velcro on both monkeys so a student just places their monkey on the spot and it shows who is in that center.

 Then the students each have their own matching monkey with their name on it. If there is no room for their monkey then the center is full.  When a child moves, they move their monkey to a new "open" center.
At the end of choice time all the monkeys go back to their home on a black homing board.

 Problem Solved!  It only took a few days for the kids get the concept down.  Now they walk around saying "don't forget your monkey" and "is it monkey time?"  So cute!

Winter Water Table Play!

This time of year I always do a winter unit and include some sort of frozen water play, winter art, winter science and winter drama area.  For the water play my assistant had the idea of filling up a 5 gallon bucket with colored water and placing winter sea animals and polar animals into the water and freezing it over the weekend.  This was a big hit with the kids and lasted over a few days.

We also gave the kids sponges to work the ice down.  They couldn't wait to see what animal they would discover next.

   After a day of sponges we brought in basters and lastly salt.  This science discovery play is a wonderful opportunity for the children to learn about the properties of water!

I'm also working on assessments so I brought in the objectives comparing objects by differences and size with foam snowballs.

It helped that I printed the word small on smaller letters and the word Big on larger letters.  This way the kids knew which basket to sort into for the activity.

 Our state standards require that we have a sand and water table available daily, which limits me on other sensory play. So... I decided to bring in an extra sensory bin for other fun tactile experiences.  This is my rice bin that I placed snowflake confetti and foam snowflakes in for the winter theme.  The kids loved it!

One project we did for art was marshmallow painting.  I read Snowmen at Night first and I used big and small marshmallows so we could work on the comparing objective again :)

Here is a picture of my cold center.  The kids really enjoyed getting dressed up for the cold weather.

Then....I turned it into a Hot Cocoa center!  I posted on this in a previous post, Brrrr baby it's cold outside! but this year I added some new things: New sign, laminated hot cocoa packets, hot cocoa metal tins and boxes, marshmallow jar and peppermint jar.

  

This is one of my favorite times of teaching!  What do you do for your winter theme?